Projects/Usability/HIG/HelpSystem

Purpose

The help system should be used as a secondary mechanism to support users’ complete and better understanding of tasks — the primary mechanism should be the user interface itself. Users consult the help system only if they can't accomplish a task with the UI.

Examples

Guidelines

Try to make Help unnecessary in the first place:

Make common tasks easy to discover and perform.

Provide clear main instructions as well as concise control labels that are goal- and task-oriented.